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Comment on Morgenthau's “Dilemmas of Freedom”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Howard B. White
Howard B. White
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research
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Extract

Hans J. Morgenthau's “The Dilemmas of Freedom” is an extremely able, concise, and forthright treatment of a problem of grave importance, and a defense of a point of view which I deeply respect, but concerning which I have serious doubts. I suppose that the differences between us could be summarized in this way: Morgenthau suggests that the solutions to the dilemmas of freedom which he finds, are available and explicable largely in a kind of formalism. He follows, in that, the great tradition of the Federalist, which he quotes. I believe it is difficult today to understand these solutions in formal terms, and I believe the difficulty is enhanced by Morgenthau's own conception of what freedom is.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1957 , pp. 724 - 733
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

1 Burke, , “Present Discontents,” in Works (Boston, 1865), Vol. 1, p. 444Google Scholar.

2 Symposium, 176 C, 4–7; Apology, 29 D, 2 ff.; Charmides, 153 A, 1 ff.

3 “Dilige, et quod vis fac.” For the citation (in Epistola Joh. Tractatus 7, Kap. 8), I am indebted to Rudolph Arbesmann, O.S.A.

4 Battle for the Mind (London, 1957), p. 226Google Scholar. See also p. 38.

5 For example, in Politics among Nations (New York, 1954), p. 155Google Scholar, Morgenthau says, “The aspiration for power on the part of several nations, each trying either to maintain or to overthrow the status quo leads of necessity to a configuration that is called balance of power and to policies that aim at preserving it.” If that is so, and Morgenthau makes a strong case for it, nations which recognize the real configuration, that of balance of power, are selecting a program of action that is “necessarily superior” to a program which supposes a different configuration, and which is therefore the “prey of illusions.”

6 Opening of Cap. XX of Tractatus Theologico-Polilicus: “Si aeque facile esset animis, ac linguis imperare, tuto unusquisque regnaret et nullum imperium violentum foret,” and the following passages.

7 Jefferson, , “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” in Padover, S. K., The Complete Jefferson (New York, 1943), p. 946Google Scholar.

8 Mason, Alpheus T., “Business Organized as Power: the New Imperium in Imperio,” in this Review, Vol. 44 (June 1950), pp. 323 ff.Google Scholar; Andrew Hacker, “Is the ‘New Freedom’ Obsolete?,” a paper read before a panel of the APSA meeting, September 1956 (mimeo).

9 Seldes, Gilbert, The Great Audience (New York, 1950), pp. 137–139Google Scholar. See the works of The Commission on Freedom of the Press, especially the report, A Free and Responsible Press, and Hocking, W. E., Freedom of the Press (both Chicago, 1947)Google Scholar.

10 See, among others, Kelley, Stanley Jr., Professional Public Relations and Political Power (Baltimore, 1956)Google Scholar; Lubell, Samuel, The Revolt of the Moderates (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, Ch. 1, Sec. 2; articles in the Reporter by Gordon Cotler and by William Harlan Hale.

11 The Human Use of Human Beings (New York, 1950, 1954), p. 162Google Scholar.

12 Op. cit., pp. 102, 235–236.

13 Op. cit., p. 233.

14 Republic, 343 A ff; Statesman, 271 E 6–8, 275 B 1 ff. See also Francis Bacon in the case of the Post-Nati of Scotland, in Works (Spedding & Ellis, Boston, 1861), Vol. 15, p. 198Google Scholar. Bacon makes reference to a like parallel in Xenophon, which he does not cite.

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